Tile spacers are objects that are sized and shaped to be placed between tiles as they are being installed to provide for near uniform spacing between the tiles. Tile spacers can come in a variety of shapes, such as ‘X’ and ‘T’ shapes, and a variety of sizes, such as 1/16″, ⅛″, 3/16″, and ¼″. Tile spacers can additionally be made out of a variety of materials, such as plastic, rubber, metal, or any combination or compound thereof.
Tile spacers have traditionally been installed through hand placement of the tile spacers at appropriate locations between tiles that are being installed. Tile spacer use has historically been tedious. For instance, a user has had to first retrieve a tile spacer for use (e.g., grab an individual tile spacer from a bag of tile spacers), then properly orient the tile spacer within their hand(s) for placement (e.g., grip one end of a tile spacer between the user's index finger and thumb), and then place the tile spacer on end between two tiles without having the tile spacer fall over or out of alignment during placement of the tile spacer and movement/alignment of the adjacent tiles. This sequence of actions is then performed for each tile spacer that is used during installation of tiles, which, when considering that tile jobs often require the use hundreds of tile spacers, can in the aggregate be quite time consuming and tedious. When manually placing tile spacers, a user may have to take his/her focus away from the area of interest between tile spacers to grab and properly orient the next tile spacer. This shifting focus between preparing the next tile spacer and the area of interest (e.g., the gap between the tiles) can additionally cause manual placement of the tile spacers to be a slow process.